An Experiment in Scotch

Saturday, July 23, 2005

As it turns out, technology is probably bad for the attention span. We here at The Experiment have suspected this for some time since we can't seem to get through the work day without opening Firefox 15-20 times. Email and instant messaging only make it worse. The price of being constantly connected I suppose but it makes our brain feel like the inside of a beehive at times.
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Monday, April 18, 2005

When you have to do the same thing over and over in Microsoft Word, it can really help to create your own shortcut. For example, I've got a TODO list for the house/wedding that's a mile long and I'm constantly needing to strike through things that are done. I got tired of going to Format->Font->Strikethrough so I set up a keyboard shortcut by going to Tools->Customize->Keyboard and then finding what I wanted to do and defining a shortcut for it, in this case Alt-Ctl-Q.

I'm sure that tons of other people out there already know this but it's way cool to me.
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Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Dealing with SBC DSL tech support has to be one of the most painful experiences in life. I don't know where they find the people who man their phones but there really ought to be an IQ test or something. Instead, they give them menus to read from, you tell them which issue is closest to the one you are having and they then tell you to reboot your modem, regardless. You should be able to opt out and call a special phone number just for people who already have done that.

I don't think that their tech support are anymore qualified than your basic customer support person which makes no sense to me. They don't seem to have a clue when it comes to computers. Meh, the connection is back up, what do I care?
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Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Geek alert! Well one can't blog about serious stuff all the time so I'm blogging about my new kick ass mouse. It's the little things. It's a Logitech Trackman and it rocks! I've had it installed about an hour and already, I love it. Scrolling is a little funky yet but I'm getting used to it. I highly recommend one if you've been thinking about one. This is hardly bleeding edge stuff though.
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Friday, May 07, 2004

IT tip of the week: If you've got a SOAP web service and you are using the XML DateTime data type, the default is GMT. When the web service receives the parameter, it will translate it to whatever time zone the target machine is in. So for example, if someone sends me a time in CST, it actually becomes 6 hours earlier, in this case the International Date Line West. If you're not prepared for this, it can give decidedly unexpected results.

See the XML Schema specification for more details on how to format Date-Time elements.
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004

This kicks butt! The more we use technology for the benefit of our troops, the better. Plus, by using non-lethal deterrents, we can build more trust in places like Iraq.
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004

I'm rapidly becoming addicted to my news aggregator, so much so that when I run across a blog I really like that has no XML or RSS feed, I'm instantly annoyed and wonder if I should really like that site. In case you're wondering, I use SharpReader, an aggregator written in C# that is pretty snazzy if you ask me.
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